CollegeRecruiter.com Blog

I've been receiving a fair number of kudos recently for some of our policies, some of which are new and some of which are old.

An example of a new policy for which we've been receiving a lot of praise is that we stopped selling resume searching when two weeks ago we re-launched our web site with new back and front ends.

But we're equally as proud of some of our old policies, such as our effort to be as transparent as we can. I recently wrote about how after our re-launch we've seen daily job applications increase by about 100 percent. Today I'm happy to reveal that since our re-launch we're also seeing an increase in the number of job applications per posting increase by some 140 percent. Prior to the re-launch, we typically saw about 10 percent of candidates who viewed a job posting apply to that job posting. We're now seeing about 24 percent apply to viewed postings.

Some might argue that increased applications isn't a good thing but our clients would disagree. The vast majority of our clients regularly comment on the number of applications as a key criteria for how they decide whether to use a job board and to what extent to use that job board. Almost every large employer has an applicant tracking system or other software that helps them identify the best prospects for a particular position so rather than having each job board try to infer which candidates are best and then having different and often incorrect standards applied to those candidates, it seems to me that it makes the most sense to put those decision into the hands of the party best suited to making them and making them consistently: the employer.

We're not screening applicants. We're not testing them. We're not running background checks on them. We see our job as connecting quality employers with quality candidates. And we're cognizant of the fact that what makes for a quality candidate to one employer makes for a horrible candidate to another. So rather than asking our employer clients to re-enter their selection criteria into our system so that we can screen, tier, or otherwise rank candidates inconsistently with the employer's own software, we've made it as easy as possible for those employers to receive applications from the candidates using our site. At most the candidates need to complete four fields of data in order to apply: name, email address, resume and/or cover letter, and their geographic location. That's it.

We've come to the conclusion that less is more. Less intensive graphics make for a faster and therefore more enjoyable experience. Less clutter makes for a more easily navigated site. And less application fields makes for more applications, more candidates who are happy, and more employers who are happy.